A BMJ-published study from the Scottish Physical Activity Research Collaboration has focussed not on the fact that walking 30 minutes every day will significantly reduce your chances of suffering from several diseases (potentially halving heart disease risk for example) but on how to motivate people to act on this advice.
What would it take for YOU to change your habits and walk for 30 minutes every day? The answer is interesting –
Our findings are consistent with (but certainly not proof of) an assumption that different types of people may respond to different approaches, tailored to their psychological characteristics or life circumstances. In other words, one size may not fit all and various approaches should be offered: some people may respond best to personal advice from their doctor, others may prefer the private feedback from a device such as a pedometer, others (perhaps those in a more advantaged socioeconomic position) may benefit from interventions delivered through the internet, others may benefit from the social support of a walking group, and others may increase their walking in response to prompts about reducing their car use on environmental grounds.
In other words, what works for one person doesn’t work for another and if we want to help people we need to both actually communicate with them to find out a bit more about them, and then tailor our advice to best suit the individual.
This kind of study gives me hope. For too long Medicine has focussed on disease and then tried to treat every patient with the same disease in the same way, but we are beginning to see the glimmers of the New Medicine which focusses on the individual and tailors the treatments according to the individual’s uniqueness.
This is a move from Zombie Medicine (unthinking, treat everyone the same) to Hero Medicine (thinking, holistic and individualised)
Heroes Not Zombies 
More cause for hope. The appearance of the following saying of Hippocrates in a BMJ paper:
It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.
Ah yes, David, the glimmerings are there! You know, I do think that the issues of individuality, narrative, holism, mind/body approaches, which collectively orientate health care to the PERSON rather than the disease form the basis of a movement towards a better form of medicine.
However, I often feel quite unsure how to help to build that movement. Have you any ideas?
I’m sure you know much more than I do about the institutional structures which maintain the mind-body split. Perhaps we can draw inspiration from abroad: from the French, the Hopital Pierre Marty (notice that expenses are covered by social security); from the Germans, some Balint-inspired practice.
Ideally, there would be set up a hospital which adopted a wholly mind-body oriented approach, which would recruit only staff with a commitment to this approach. I can imagine, however, the force of the legal, financial and medical obstacles that would stand in the way.
Perhaps a large part of the change has to originate with the public. I was encouraged by the large turn out at the Hay Festival to our talk. Mobilising this enthusiasm into effective action is not so easy though.